No Mercy / No Malice: Chokepoints

What It Covers

Scott Galloway maps five critical global chokepoints — the Strait of Hormuz, SpaceX's satellite dominance, Taiwan's chip manufacturing, cloud infrastructure concentration, and executive branch power consolidation — arguing these vulnerabilities were deliberately built, not accidentally created.

Key Questions Answered

• •Satellite Monopoly Risk: SpaceX controls 84% of US space launches and 91% of low-Earth orbit communications satellites, all consolidated under Elon Musk's single entity after merging SpaceX with xAI at a $1.25 trillion valuation with 79% voting power — one person controlling global connectivity infrastructure.
• •Taiwan Chip Dependency: TSMC alone controls 72% of the global chip foundry market, producing processors for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm. A Chinese blockade or 72-hour cyber disruption would trigger an estimated 10% global GDP loss, with US backup capacity unavailable before 2030.
• •Cloud Concentration Fragility: Three companies — Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft — control two-thirds of the cloud market. A single AWS data center in Northern Virginia has caused three major outages in five years, generating 6.5 million outage reports and taking down thousands of services simultaneously.
• •Executive Power Consolidation: Congress has not formally declared war in decades, yet the 2001 AUMF has justified classified military operations in at least 22 countries. Trade policy, constitutionally assigned to Congress, has been functionally dominated by the executive branch since the 1930s.